10. Good One
You’re a good dad, until you’re not, in India Donaldson’s deceptively quiet feature debut, featuring an equally unassuming knockout performance from newcomer Lily Collias as a 17-year-old who goes on a camping trip with her father and his close friend.
With his first film in 32 years, Spanish director Victor Erice (The Spirit of the Beehive) suggests that art might be the last thing that speaks to us after many years have passed and memories have begun to fade.
8. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
In Romanian director Radu Jude’s bleakly comic opus about an overworked production assistant on an exploitative corporate video, these are the four horsemen of the apocalypse: capitalism, misogyny, greed, and social media.
Form meets . . . what is my function, purpose, community, and identity in a world in which I don’t seem to belong?
6. Challengers
[Insert Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ deliciously clubby score here.]
5. Anora
For all the shouting, kicking, gyrating, and lavish spending that propels Sean Baker’s latest study in downstream dignity, a quiet sort of intimacy has the final word.
The rare prequel that feels necessary.
3. All That We Imagine as Light
No diatribe, this cry for justice from writer-director Payal Kapadia—centered on a pair of nurses and roommates negotiating patriarchy and provincialism in contemporary Mumbai—argues for dignity and autonomy with astonishing tenderness.
A trans bildungsroman lovingly (if illicitly) built from the biggest of IP, Vera Drew’s People’s Joker is a practical joke with surprising emotional power.
1. Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell
After being suddenly tasked with the care of his young nephew, an aimless Vietnamese man undergoes a journey of faith, one in which quiet breezes, rippling streams, and flocks of birds—rather than demanding doctrine—lead the way.
